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Hazel
Hazel is a pikachu who hails from the outskirts of Silver Town , the home of Johto's annual Silver Conference and the pulsing heart of the Region's long-entrenched League culture. She shares a mother with Alex, making them half-siblings; her father being a natural pikachu rather than one of the Sea's yokai means she is simply a pokémon like any other, with all of the strengths and limitations that come with such. I Wanna Be the Very Best: The Chu With a Champion's Heart Hazel's early life was much like that of any young pichu - a lot of eating, plenty of sleeping nestled up against her Mama Rose's tummy, and roughhousing with any vaguely entertaining object that she could find - even a bit of dandelion fluff in the breeze was a rival to be chased and challenged, knocked from the sky and pinned with a paw for the sheer fun of it. But most of all, she was curious and inquisitive, bombarding her Mama with question after insessant question, as children of a certain age from just about any species are wont to do: Why are those pokémon hanging out with those humans? What's a Trainer? What's a Champion? '' ''Do I have a Papa, Mama? Why isn't he here? Other pichu have Papas. What about '''me'? Not fair.'' Mama, if you don't like humans, why do we live here instead of in the forest? Mama, why do you always call the forest the '''Sea', when there isn't any water? That's dumb, Mama. '' Ooh! Mama! Look! Look! It's back again! What makes all of that lightning? All the way up there! At the top of the mountain! While many of her questions recieved answers that Hazel deemed unsatisfactory - when they were answered at all - it was the subject of the mysterious bolts from the blue that she could see arcing all about Mt Silver's peak, even when there was nary a stormcloud in sight, that teased at the little pichu's imagination like nothing else. Any time she caught sight of them, she'd pause to watch the dazzling display, bombarding her mother with questions all the while. And always, Rose would answer her spirited daugher in the same measured way: "The Sea's made that whole mountain a bad place. It's not for pichu. You shouldn't go there. Listen to Mama." Hazel indeed tried her best to listen to her Mama, but Rose was often lost in her own world, and paid increasingly less attention to her daughter as the pichu grew older. And then, one early April day, during the period leading up to that year's Silver Conference...she slipped away from the nest like a ghost and vanished, leaving her too-young child to fend for herself. Hazel, who'd been hiding in the grasses near the road to spy on the casual Battles between the powerful Trainers who were starting to flit into town, returned to the tree that evening to find the nest empty, with the only trace of Rose being a faint, thin thread of scent that only went as far as the roots before vanishing. Scared and confused, the little 'chu returned to the empty nest and curled up there to wait for her mother, only getting up to pad to the entrance and cry out, in the hopes that Rose might hear. Mama! I'm here! ...Mama! Come home! ...Mama...! Please! The one who eventually answered her desperate cries was not Rose, but instead a pair of strange pikachu, wandering males attracted by the squeaks of an unattended young pichu with no fresh mother's scent nearby - a nest free for the claiming. They clambored into the tree's hollow as if they owned the space already, glowering and snarling at the little one who huddled before them - and it was at that moment that Hazel made a decision, one that was to dictate the flavor of the future course of her life: I'm not gonna let these big bullies beat me up. ...I'm going to beat '''them' up! Fuelled by this fresh surge of mental resolve, the pichu charged at the two big home invaders, her teeth bared and cheeks sparking, but her physical strength wasn't ''quite so big as her heart. The big pikachu had her pinned under their paws as if she were nothing more than dandelion fluff, leering down and laughing in her face. "What can you do to stop us?" "Yeah! You're just a pathetic little girl!" Infuriated and frustrated by her own inability to do much of anything ''about any aspect of her situation, Hazel continued to attempt to thrash and bite, but she was just a child, and she couldn't free herself from the much heavier and more powerful adults. The more she tried, the angrier she grew - so angry that, eventually, her vision flashed white. She was so furious, and wished to win against them so much, that her emotions reached a fever pitch; when the world eventually came back into focus, Hazel realized she was ''bigger. Her tail was long and strong, just like Rose's, just like her attackers'. Her paws were bigger, her body ''was bigger, everything was bigger - she'd evolved, not through the strength of love as is typical for a pichu, but through sheer will and raw, white rage. The two other pikachu were so surprised by the sudden change that Hazel managed to get in an attack, zapping the both of them with a strong jolt from her newly-red cheeks. But this was not a proud moment for the new pikachu, as she slipped out of the tree and away from their cruel words and laughing taunts, escaping like a coward into the night before her foes had a chance to regain their senses - she'd felt like she'd cheated. She hadn't ''truly won that encounter, she'd dumb-lucked her way out of it; cheated, in a fashion. Her body was forever altered as a result of that cheating, a badge she has to bear to this day that she hadn't been strong enough to survive as she was. By the time Hazel had relaxed enough to slow down and look about herself, she realized that she was lost. She didn't know how to get back to the tree to continue the wait for her Mama...and even if she had, those home invaders were likely to have claimed her and Rose's old nest for their own. She might have evolved, but this only changed her physical form - it didn't make her any older, nor any more capable of caring for herself on her own that she had been prior. She was still a child, pikachu or no, and she didn't really want to be alone. But if her Mama was gone, and her home had been taken... where could an orphan go? The mountain might not be for pichu...but I'm not a pichu anymore, am I? Hazel, with her favorite question once more on her lips, asked any pokémon she could find about the source of the lightning on Mt Silver (and if they wouldn't answer, she'd threaten them until they would answer). But no one had ever seemed to know, exactly. Some had said it was a horrible cannibal pikachu who hated everybody, and that it would eat her if she were stupid enough to go up there. Others claimed that the pikachu wouldn't eat ''her, but that it ''would throw her down the mountain and laugh, because it was so powerful and cruel. Some claimed that it wasn't even a pikachu at all, that the lightning was far stronger than anything a mere pikachu could ever hope to be capable of. They insisted that a raikou or a zapdos lived up there, or something that wasn't a pokémon at all. "Not all fairies stay in the Sea," was a common caution; just as with Rose, no further explanations came when she attempted to press for them. With all the differeing answers, it was impossible to be sure, but one thing was ''clearly true: there was something strong and powerful at the top of Mt Silver, and it was everything that Hazel wanted to be. And since she didn't have anywhere else to go, or anything to really live for...she decided that she was going to climb up there and '''find' the monster, whatever and whoever it was. And once she got there, she resolved, she'd beg it to let her stay with it. To make her its apprentince. To teach her in the art of how to be strong and brave and fierce just like it was, so that nothing could ever hurt or threaten her again...even if it meant the risk of being eaten, or thrown down the mountain. To the lost child with nothing else to look up to, it was a chance she had to take. And that was exactly what Hazel did. She scaled Mt Silver, taking a route that wouldn't bring her near the strange "Sea" she was warned so much about, so adamantly determined to get to the top that she didn't let anything stop her. Not the wind...nor the cliffs...nor the snow and ice, once she got really ''high up. Not even hunger! She ''would ''reach the top, and she'd beg that beast to train her, just like the human Trainers! Little did Hazel know that Mt Silver's pinnacle was, among those human Trainers, viewed as a place that belonged to '''Champions', and that only the greatest of Trainers, who'd proven their worth, were allowed to even attempt reaching it. What she had achieved, in scaling her way up to the snowy top through sheer force of will and dogged refusal to give up, was itself a monumental act of greatness that few others could claim. But what she ultimately discovered there hadn't been at all like she'd been expecting. Like No One Ever Was: The Greatest Grandfather and a Promise Forged in Stone (Text). To Catch Them Is My Real Test, to Train Them Is My Cause: The Man in Red and the Unwinnable Prize (Text.) I Will Travel Across the Land, Searching Far and Wide: Alolan Chu and Onwards to Monté (Text) Teaching Myself to Understand the Power That's Inside: Hazel Today - Wife, Mother, Seeker...Champion? (Text.)Category:Characters Category:Natives Category:Pokémon